É rara a preocupação com a qualidade de implementação de software. Pode-se observar que as estruturas internas dos softwares são freqüentemente complexas e desorganizadas, especialmente no caso dos softwares que são ditos orientados a objetos. Essa complexidade afeta diretamente a manutenibilidade e a susceptibilidade a erros, dificultando a alteração e a adição de novas funcionalidades aos softwares. As próprias alterações, inerentes aos softwares, os tornam mais complexos, o que agrava o problema. Neste contexto, acredita-se que o controle da complexidade pode levar a produtos de software de melhor qualidade. Assim, trata-se neste trabalho da manutenção preventiva, implementada por meio de inspeções, refatorações e análise de métricas. São estudadas falhas de manutenibilidade em uma amostra de programas orientados a objetos e, a partir dos resultados, são propostos artefatos de apoio para um processo de inspeção de software e modelos para os produtos de trabalho gerados nesse processo. Propõe-se o uso da técnica de leitura PBR (Leitura Baseada em Perspectivas) como uma maneira de se melhorar a detecção de falhas de manutenibilidade. Finalmente, a proposta deste trabalho foi validada por meio de um estudo de caso / The commitment with the quality of software implemetation is rare. It\'s possible to observe that the software internal structures are frequently complex and disorganized, especially when talking about software that is said to be object-oriented. This complexity directly affects maintainability and error proneness, making it difficult to change and to add new functionalities to software. Changes themselves, that are inherent in software, make it more complex, and that makes the problem more serious. In this context, it\'s believed that the control of complexity can lead to better quality software products. Thus, the subject of this work is the preventive maintenance, implemented by means of inspections, refactoring and metric analysis. Maintenance flaws were studied in a sample of object-oriented programs and, based on the results, support artifacts for an inspection process were proposed, along with models of work products for this process. The use of PBR (Perspective-Based Reading) technique is proposed as a means of improving the detection of maintenance flaws. Finally, the proposal of this work is validated through a case study

O desenvolvimento comercial da internet possibilitou o surgimento de sistemas de informação que se apoiam no uso da world wide web como plataforma. Esses sistemas baseados na web (web-based systems) têm aplicações em diversas áreas e setores econômicos. No ramo educacional, eles têm sido aplicados como base para os processos de ensino e aprendizagem via computador (e-learning) e são, comumente, denominados de Ambientes Virtuais de Aprendizagem (AVA). Os AVAs podem ser utilizados tanto para o ensino exclusivamente a distância quanto como apoio ao ensino presencial. O presente trabalho tem como objeto de investigação justamente o emprego de ambientes virtuais como tecnologia de apoio ao ensino presencial tradicional dado em sala de aula em cursos de graduação do ensino superior. O crescente uso de AVAs para tal finalidade leva ao questionamento de quais são as dimensões e características de qualidade destes ambientes e como estas dimensões estão associadas com os seus efeitos, quais sejam, a satisfação, o uso e os benefícios percebidos pelos usuários de tais sistemas? Desta forma, o trabalho tem como objetivo identificar as dimensões de qualidade em AVAs, por meio do estabelecimento de um modelo teórico que evidencie quais são os atributos determinantes em relação à qualidade em ambientes virtuais de ensino e quais são os efeitos e os impactos individuais em torno dos usuários discentes. Para tanto, são realizadas duas pesquisas de campo. A primeira é descritiva-explicativa, de abordagem quantitativa, com o emprego de Modelagem de Equações Estruturais, como método de análise e delineamento da pesquisa. Esta pesquisa foi feita com discentes usuários de um ambiente virtual disponibilizado por uma IES e teve como objetivo a elaboração de um modelo de relações de qualidade em AVAs. A segunda pesquisa consiste em um estudo com abordagem essencialmente descritiva, que tem como objetivo classificar quais são as características de relevância nos AVAs, de acordo com o Modelo Kano de classificação de requisitos. Os principais resultados apontam que a qualidade da informação e a qualidade do sistema influenciam na satisfação e nos benefícios percebidos pelos usuários dos AVAs e que as características destas dimensões são consideradas mais significativas do que as funcionalidades disponíveis nos referidos sistemas. / The commercial development of the internet enabled the birth of information systems that rely on the use of the world wide web as a platform. These web-based systems have applications in various fields and economic sectors. In the education sector, they have been used as basis for computer teaching and learning processes (e-learning) and are commonly called Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). These VLEs can be used both for distance teaching exclusively and as support for students in traditional presential classes. This work investigates the virtual environments use as support technology for students in traditional classroom undergraduate courses in higher education. The growing use of VLEs for this purpose raises the following questions: what are the dimensions and quality characteristics of these environments and how are these dimensions associated with their effects, satisfaction, use, and net benefits perceived by users of such systems? Thus, the study aims to identify the VLEs quality dimensions, through the establishment of a theoretical model showing what the relevant VLE dimensions relating to education quality are and what the effects and individuals impacts are for user-learners. To this end, two researches were conducted. The first one was descriptive-explanatory, with a quantitative approach, using Structural Equation Modeling as analysis method and research design. This research was made with students that use a VLE and had the purpose to elaborate a VLE quality relationship model. The second study is essentially descriptive, and aims to classify which features are most relevant in VLEs, according to the Kano´s Model requirements classification. The main findings indicate that the information quality and system quality influence the satisfaction and net benefits perceived by VLEs users and characteristics of these dimensions are considered more important than the functionality features available in such systems.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi definir um processo para a avaliação de componentes de software, que possa ser utilizado em organizações que utilizem componentes comerciais ou de software livre desenvolvidos por terceiros no desenvolvimento de sistemas de software. O Desenvolvimento Baseado em Componentes (CBD - Component-based Development) é um caminho para a diminuição de custos e prazos no desenvolvimento de sistemas de software. A adesão a essa prática pelas organizações incentivou o surgimento do mercado de comercialização de componentes de software e a multiplicação de projetos de componentes de código aberto, distribuídos livremente pela Internet. No entanto, o uso de componentes de software desenvolvidos por terceiros possui um risco associado, pois um componente escolhido pode não possuir a qualidade esperada, ou não apresentar o comportamento desejado dentro das condições reais de uso. Neste contexto, o objetivo do processo de avaliação de componentes é levantar dados referentes à qualidade de um componente e interpretar esses dados, seja para adquirir confiança em um componente, ou para a seleção de um componente em casos em que existe mais de uma opção disponível. Como peça central da avaliação está o modelo de qualidade, que define os atributos de qualidade de cada fator de qualidade, e as métricas para apoiar a avaliação. / The objective of this work is to define a process to software component evaluation to organizations which use third party, commercial off-the-shelf or open source components in the development of software products. The Component-based Development (CBD) is an approach to reduce costs and time-to-market of software projects. The need of components has become an opportunity to the growth of the software component market and to multiplication of projects of open source software components, which can be freely downloaded from Internet. However, the use of third-party components in a project can be risky. It is possible that a component does not present the expected behavior or does not have the needed quality for specific conditions associated to the software system in development. In this context, the objective of the software component evaluation process is to obtain trustful information from the quality of a component and to analyze this information, assessing the component use in a particular context or selecting one component among similar products. The main part of this process is the use of Quality Model which establishes the quality factors and metrics to support the evaluation.

Systems-of-Systems (SoS) have performed an important and even essential role to the whole society and refer to complex softwareintensive systems, resulted from interoperability of independent constituent systems that work together to achieve more complex missions. SoS have emerged specially in critical application domains and, therefore, high level of quality must be assured during their development and evolution. However, dealing with quality of SoS still presents great challenges, as SoS present a set of unique characteristics that can directly affect the quality of such systems. Moreover, there are not comprehensive models that can support the quality evaluation of SoS. Motivated by this scenario, the main contribution of this Masters project is to present a SoS Evaluation Model, more specifically, addressing the crisis/emergency management domain, built in the context of a large international research project. The proposed model covers important evaluation activities and considers all SoS characteristics and challenges not usually addressed by other models. This model was applied to evaluate a crisis/emergency management SoS and our results have shown it viability to the effective management of the SoS quality. / Sistemas-de-Sistemas (SoS, do inglês Systems-of-Systems) realizam um importante e até essencial papel na sociedade. Referem-se a complexos sistemas intensivos em software, resultado da interoperabilidade de sistemas constituintes independentes que trabalham juntos para realizar missões mais complexas. SoS têm emergido especialmente em domínios de aplicação crítica, portanto, um alto nível de qualidade deve ser garantido durante seu desenvolvimento e evolução. Entretanto, lidar com qualidade em SoS ainda apresenta grandes desafios, uma vez que possuem um conjunto de características únicas que podem diretamente afetar a qualidade desses sistemas. Além disso, não existem modelos abrangentes para o suporte à avaliação de qualidade de SoS. Motivado por este cenário, a principal contribuição deste projeto de mestrado é apresentar um modelo de avaliação para SoS, especialmente destinado ao domínio de gerenciamento de crises e emergências. Este modelo foi construído no contexto de um grande projeto de pesquisa internacional, e cobre as mais importantes atividades de avaliação, considerando as principais características e desafios de SoS geralmente não abordados por outros modelos. Este modelo foi aplicado na avaliação de um SoS de gerenciamento de crises e emergência, e nossos resultados têm mostrado sua viabilidade para o efetivo gerenciamento da qualidade de SoS.

Submitted by Geyciane Santos (geyciane_thamires@hotmail.com) on 2015-06-17T13:21:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Jeanne de Castro Trovão.pdf: 2079561 bytes, checksum: c951810ee47ee9da038b5fbcc6171763 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2015-06-17T20:22:49Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Jeanne de Castro Trovão.pdf: 2079561 bytes, checksum: c951810ee47ee9da038b5fbcc6171763 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-06-17T20:22:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação- Jeanne de Castro Trovão.pdf: 2079561 bytes, checksum: c951810ee47ee9da038b5fbcc6171763 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-10-30 / FAPEAM - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas / Software companies are always concerned about improving the quality of their products and processes. By improving the quality of process, it also contributes to the quality of the product resulting from this process. Several strategies can applied to reach processes quality. One of them consists in the integration of support processes that assist the management of the main process and may be applied when required, contributing to the success and the quality of the main process and its products. When talking about software product quality, we can cite software testing activities, which are planned and executed in order to increase product quality through a process that also needs to be managed. Therefore, approaches that aim to contribute to the quality of the software testing process indirectly contribute to the quality of the software product. Thus, the strategy of integration of support processes that help to manage the testing process also contributes to this quality. However, this kind of approach is poorly developed in the technical literature, especially in the context of testing. Considering this necessity, this thesis presents the definition of two Support Processes instantiated to Software Testing Process, Testing Risk Management Process and Testing Human Resource Management Process, specified in order to contribute to the quality of management aspect of the testing process. These processes were defined based on several maturity models and norms/standards. In order to evaluate the proposed processes, a peer review was conducted with experts in the fields related to the specified processes and the results of this evaluation suggest that the proposed processes are appropriate and can be integrated into the testing process. / Empresas de software estão sempre preocupadas em melhorar a qualidade de seus produtos e processos. Ao melhorar a qualidade do processo, também se contribui para a melhoria do produto resultante desse processo. Diversas estratégias podem ser aplicadas visando à obtenção de qualidade de processos. Uma delas consiste na integração de processos de apoio, que são aqueles que auxiliam um processo principal como parte integrante, podendo ser empregado por ele quando necessário, contribuindo para o sucesso e a qualidade do processo principal e de seus produtos. Quando se fala em qualidade de produto de software, se remete às atividades de teste de software, que são planejadas e executadas a fim de aumentar a qualidade do produto através de um processo que também precisa ser gerenciado. Portanto, abordagens que visam contribuir para a qualidade do processo de testes de software contribuem indiretamente com a qualidade do produto de software. Assim, a estratégia de integração de processos de apoio que ajudam a gerenciar o processo de testes também contribui com essa qualidade. No entanto, esse tipo de abordagem é pouco desenvolvido na literatura técnica, principalmente no contexto de teste. Considerando essa necessidade, esta dissertação apresenta a definição de dois Processos de Apoio ao Processo de Testes, Processo de Gerência de Riscos de Teste e Processo de Gerência de Recursos Humanos de Teste, especificados e adequados com o objetivo de contribuir com a qualidade no aspecto gerencial do processo de testes de software. Esses processos foram definidos tendo-se como base diversos modelos de maturidade e normas técnicas. Para avaliar os processos propostos, uma revisão por pares foi conduzida com especialistas das áreas referentes aos processos especificados e os resultados dessa avaliação sugerem que os processos aqui definidos estão adequados e possibilitam a aplicação deles de forma integrada ao processo de testes.

O objetivo deste trabalho foi definir um processo para a avaliação de componentes de software, que possa ser utilizado em organizações que utilizem componentes comerciais ou de software livre desenvolvidos por terceiros no desenvolvimento de sistemas de software. O Desenvolvimento Baseado em Componentes (CBD - Component-based Development) é um caminho para a diminuição de custos e prazos no desenvolvimento de sistemas de software. A adesão a essa prática pelas organizações incentivou o surgimento do mercado de comercialização de componentes de software e a multiplicação de projetos de componentes de código aberto, distribuídos livremente pela Internet. No entanto, o uso de componentes de software desenvolvidos por terceiros possui um risco associado, pois um componente escolhido pode não possuir a qualidade esperada, ou não apresentar o comportamento desejado dentro das condições reais de uso. Neste contexto, o objetivo do processo de avaliação de componentes é levantar dados referentes à qualidade de um componente e interpretar esses dados, seja para adquirir confiança em um componente, ou para a seleção de um componente em casos em que existe mais de uma opção disponível. Como peça central da avaliação está o modelo de qualidade, que define os atributos de qualidade de cada fator de qualidade, e as métricas para apoiar a avaliação. / The objective of this work is to define a process to software component evaluation to organizations which use third party, commercial off-the-shelf or open source components in the development of software products. The Component-based Development (CBD) is an approach to reduce costs and time-to-market of software projects. The need of components has become an opportunity to the growth of the software component market and to multiplication of projects of open source software components, which can be freely downloaded from Internet. However, the use of third-party components in a project can be risky. It is possible that a component does not present the expected behavior or does not have the needed quality for specific conditions associated to the software system in development. In this context, the objective of the software component evaluation process is to obtain trustful information from the quality of a component and to analyze this information, assessing the component use in a particular context or selecting one component among similar products. The main part of this process is the use of Quality Model which establishes the quality factors and metrics to support the evaluation.

The ubiquitous nature of software demands that software is released without faults. However, software developers inadvertently introduce faults into software during development. To remove the faults in software, one of the tasks developers perform is debugging. However, debugging is a difficult, tedious, and time-consuming process. Several semi-automated techniques have been developed to reduce the burden on the developer during debugging. These techniques consist of experimental, statistical, and program-structure based techniques. Most of the debugging techniques address the part of the debugging process that relates to finding the location of the fault, which is referred to as fault localization. The current fault-localization techniques have several limitations. Some of the limitations of the techniques include (1) problems with program semantics, (2) the requirement for automated oracles, which in practice are difficult if not impossible to develop, and (3) the lack of theoretical basis for addressing the fault-localization problem. The thesis of this dissertation is that statistical causal analysis combined with program analysis is a feasible and effective approach to finding the causes of software failures. The overall goal of this research is to significantly extend the state of the art in fault localization. To extend the state-of-the-art, a novel probabilistic model that combines program-analysis information with statistical information in a principled manner is developed. The model known as the probabilistic program dependence graph (PPDG) is applied to the fault-localization problem. The insights gained from applying the PPDG to fault localization fuels the development of a novel theoretical framework for fault localization based on established causal inference methodology. The development of the framework enables current statistical fault-localization metrics to be analyzed from a causal perspective. The analysis of the metrics show that the metrics are related to each other thereby allowing the unification of the metrics. Also, the analysis of metrics from a causal perspective reveal that the current statistical techniques do not find the causes of program failures instead the techniques find the program elements most associated with failures. However, the fault-localization problem is a causal problem and statistical association does not imply causation. Several empirical studies are conducted on several software subjects and the results (1) confirm our analytical results, (2) demonstrate the efficacy of our causal technique for fault localization. The results demonstrate the research in this dissertation significantly improves on the state-of-the-art in fault localization.

Software product lines provide the opportunity to improve productivity, quality and time-to-market of software-based systems by means of systematic reuse. So as to accomplish systematic software reuse, elicitation of commonality knowledge is to be upheld by the analysis and management of variability knowledge inherent in domain requirements. Considerable effort is devoted to the management of functional variability, often neglecting the impact of quality concerns originating from non-functional requirements. In this thesis, a hybrid approach concentrating on the modeling of quantitative as well as qualitative concerns on quality has been proposed. This approach basically aims to support the domain design process by modeling non-functional variability. It further aims to support application design process by providing trade-off selection ability among quality concerns to control functional features that belong to the same domain. This approach is implemented and evaluated on an example domain to reveal its benefits on non-functional variability.

Οι εφαρμογές συναίσθησης (awareness applications) αποτελούν συστήματα ενίσχυσης της αντίληψης της παρουσίας (presence) και εντάσσονται στην ευρύτερη κατηγορία των συστημάτων υποστήριξης της επικοινωνίας με τη διαμεσολάβηση υπολογιστών (computer mediated communication systems). Μια πληθώρα τέτοιων εφαρμογών – μικρών και εξειδικευμένων ακόμη – έχει αναπτυχθεί τα τελευταία χρόνια (π.χ. MSN, Facebook), ενώ αναμένεται η ευρύτερη διάδοσή τους ως αποτέλεσμα της ανάπτυξης των κινητών επικοινωνιών. Η παρούσα διπλωματική εργασία βασίζεται στην πλατφόρμα ανάπτυξης εφαρμογών συναίσθησης ASTRA. Το συγκριτικό πλεονέκτημα της πλατφόρμας απέναντι στις υπάρχουσες εφαρμογές είναι ότι είναι γενικευμένη και συνεπώς μπορεί να οδηγήσει στην ανάπτυξη πλήθους εφαρμογών με σχετικά εύκολο τρόπο, δίνοντας τεράστια ώθηση στην ευρύτερη ανάπτυξη του πεδίου. Η εργασία αποσκοπεί στην δημιουργία ενός πλαισίου αξιολόγησης (evaluation framework) εφαρμογών συναίσθησης, το οποίο θα βασίζεται κυρίως στο πρότυπο ISO 9126. Για το σκοπό αυτό θα αναλυθεί το εν λόγω πρότυπο και θα εντοπιστούν οι ιδιαίτερες διαστάσεις των συστημάτων συναίσθησης (τα οποία θα αναλυθούν ως εφαρμογές διαδικτύου). Στη συνέχεια θα ομαδοποιηθούν τα χαρακτηριστικά τους και θα ενταχθούν στα τέσσερα στοιχεία εξωτερικής ποιότητας που προβλέπει το πρότυπο. Ως πεδίο εφαρμογής του πλαισίου θα χρησιμοποιηθεί η πλατφόρμα ASTRA, η οποία θα αξιολογηθεί με βάση αυτό. Για το σκοπό της εργασίας θα αναπτυχθούν και ορισμένες εφαρμογές συναίσθησης με τη χρήση της πλατφόρμας. / This thesis presents a quality evaluation framework for awareness systems. These are Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) systems, which support people’s needs to communicate and enhance their sense of presence. In general, quality is defined by the extent to which the software meets user needs and requirements. Our framework is based on the ISO9126 standard, which includes two quality dimensions, external and internal, and defines a set of quality criteria for each. We have chosen to adopt the end-user standpoint in evaluating awareness systems, thus we model only the four criteria groups of external quality, that is, functionality, usability, reliability and efficiency. Firstly, we present a brief introduction to software quality and the ISO9126 standard. Then, we present presence and awareness systems, and discuss their emergence and the needs they serve. We continue with a broad survey of presence and awareness systems and social software. For each of the surveyed systems (the list includes Facebook, MSN, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn et al), we present an extensive list of features, which support user/community management and application management. A comparative table summarizes the features of the systems surveyed. Based on this discussion, we develop the proposed evaluation framework, by listing detailed criteria for each of the four groups of external quality, according to ISO9126. For each group, we list two tables of criteria, one for community management evaluation and one for application evaluation. The criteria are sub-grouped into presentation, navigation, escalation, content, applications, communication, awareness, and connectedness. Each table is followed by a brief explanation of the criteria it contains and the range of values they assume. Then we present in detail ASTRA, the first pervasive CMC system that was designed and developed in order to enhance presence without requiring users to use a computer to join. ASTRA applies a pervasive computing interface on top of a social computing system, which supports community and awareness application management. The focus-nimbus model is used to describe the awareness framework and a novel connectedness theory is validated with the system. Finally, we evaluate and classify the presence and awareness systems, including ASTRA, according to the proposed evaluation framework.

The development of high quality software the first time, greatly depends upon the ability to judge the potential quality of the software early in the life cycle. The Software Engineering Research Center design metrics research team at Ball State University has developed a metrics approach for analyzing software designs. Given a design, these metrics highlight stress points and determine overall design quality.The purpose of this study is to analyze multiple software releases of the Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System (AFATDS) using design metrics. The focus is on examining the transformations of design metrics at each of three releases of AFATDS to determine the relationship of design metrics to the complexity and quality of a maturing system. The software selected as a test case for this research is the Human Interface code from Concept Evaluation Phase releases 2, 3, and 4 of AFATDS. To automate the metric collection process, a metric tool called the Design Metric Analyzer was developed.Further analysis of design metrics data indicated that the standard deviation and mean for the metric was higher for release 2, relatively lower for release 3, and again higher for release 4. Interpreting this means that there was a decrease in complexity and an improvement in the quality of the software from release 2 to release 3 and an increase in complexity in release 4. Dialog with project personnel regarding design metrics confirmed most of these observations. / Department of Computer Science